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The Power LawOther

by Peter Wildeford

Who uses, recommends or left The Power Law, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

2 people

Psychiatrist and blogger, author of Slate Star Codex and its successor Astral Codex Ten.
recommended

Peter Wildeford is the winner of ACX's annual superforecasting contest; he currently works for a think tank trying to (among other things) get the US to stop leaking AI technology to China. I use him as a source of ultra-high-quality geopolitical forecasts.

Scott Alexander's own recommendation blurb for the newsletter The Power Law, on their Substack's recommendations page.

2026-07-27·astralcodexten.com ↗

Writer of the Don't Worry About the Vase blog, covering AI, rationality and decision-making; former professional Magic: The Gathering player and trader.
recommended

But he has a remarkably high hit rate of finding things I would have otherwise overlooked or offering useful new perspective.

A post going through the blogs and newsletters he recommends and why, written after declining offers of reciprocal recommendations.

2025-06-30·thezvi.substack.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.